Setting aside for a second the legal and ethical questions, let me first focus on the news that Apple’s FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) system for iBooks has been cracked. Using the latest version of Requiem, a FairPlay cracking tool that has offered DRM removal for music and movies for a number of years, it would now be possible to read your iBookstore purchases on a Kindle or other device. Possible. Not necessarily legal or ethical, but possible.
Actually, the way that Requiem works strikes me as being a bit more ethical than other DRM removal tools for Kindle, Nook, and Adobe Digital Editions DRM that have been previously highlighted on sites like Boing Boing. Unlike those tools that strip away the DRM from any file, Requiem does not actually break the DRM on an iBook. According to documentation it uses a legal key to open a legal copy of an iBook . . . but then it leaves the door unlocked. So in my eyes, this is not a tool designed to pirate any digital content, but rather to allow an “owner” of digital content to access it as she or he desires on a device of his or her choice. I am sure the law, Apple, publishers, authors, and others would see it differently.
In the end, what Requiem really provides is a way to remove “friction” from reading iBooks. More on that newly redefined and still quite confusing concept soon.